Take our humble 'Painter for Hire' - an honest business looking to do real valuable work for people who genuinely want to pay for that service. That's the kind of advert we all want to see, when we need it.
To the painter, and perhaps even to the customer, it's just all round better if their straightforward advert can be targeted at people who are very likely to need the service, on demand. They can spend the same and reach some multiplier X more warm leads, or spend 1/X on the same amount of warm leads. Warm leads being people who genuinely need the service and are happy to pay for it. There's no real manipulation going on at that level - both advertiser and customer are basically better off for the targeting, with respect to that genuine painting service being facilitated more efficiently and therefore likely more cheaply.
The manipulation in this case is more at the level of the advertising platform itself - i.e. how is the targeting achieved (spying, etc), and what potential negative externalities might that have.
It's an open and interesting question if the ends justify the means in cases like this. I think I err towards saying they don't, but still at the end of the day the positives are undeniable. That is all basically a long winded way to say, I don't necessarily think it's a question of simple vs manipulative ads per se, I think the more important difference for the majority of ads is naive & expensive vs manipulative & cheap ad platforms, with a lot of tradeoffs in place between the two that are really hard to balance for both advertiser and customer.
This specific painter pays the ad platform to be the one that comes to you, when you're busy with all the other things on your todo list, so that you choose them and not one of the other 10 painters in your area.
It still doesn't make them bad, or manipulative. You actually want this service and not having to do the search yourself is a bonus, all things being equal (price and service level is in line with the local market etc).
I don't see why not. Ads have negative externalities, for example: now everybody sees the ad (not only people in need of a painter), and also now the painter with the largest advertising budget will get more customers (not the best one), and finally the advertising costs will eventually be paid by the client (the client pays for being manipulated).
But you did say "I view advertising as a form of pollution. In many cases, it erodes the human experience. It is abusive to families with children creating strife where there was none."
So I took that as caring about the macro level.
Ok, what's your business? I'll gladly check it out! I'm open-minded, love new ideas, and admire integrity and good founding principles!
Your spending is someone else's income.
It's sounds a little nutty to say you're depriving someone else but it's kind of true.
If you see products and or services you like and they have some value to you - and you can reasonably afford - it's good to spend in many ways.
I'm party from a small town, my grandfather was notoriously thrifty (and a little wealthy) and he would never eat out. A dinner at the local diner would be a 'big thing' for him. Coffee shops and little such things are impossible to take hold in this small town because people are like this. They are not poor. Just thrifty. Which is fine ... but it means no secondary economy. The only thing that survives is the gas station / resto out by the highway for passers through.
The town is definitely large enough to accomodate 1 or 2 small places, but due to the culture, it's not going to happen.
It wasn't until later on in life (studying econ) did I realize the 'other side' of savings, and real value of money: When you buy something, you generally value it more than the money, ergo, you make a profit, we call this 'consumer surplus'. It increases the quality of your life by some nudge. Buying things that can improve your life, even if it's a coffee ... has many positive effects. Without consumption most of us would be out of jobs.
Keep your money. Stick it in an index fund. It'll get invested in Google, Facebook, Apple who make money from ... advertising their own or other people's products.
To really be minimalist I think it's better (if less lucrative on average) to start your own business that takes a small chunk of business away from the giants, that you have ethical control over.
It's getting harder to do that without needing help from Google, Facebook etc. though, and definitely hard to do without advertising. But there's simple advertising "Painter for hire" and then there is the manipulative advertising based on spying on people etc. I think they are two different things.